“[media] decentralization does not necessarily increase democracy in the public sphere or in the state. On the contrary, the technologies of decentralized communication can be coupled very tightly to the charismatic, personality-centered modes of authoritarianism long associated with mass media and mass society. They can in fact be made cornerstones of such power.”

I used to have a habit of copying down all quotes from books that i read into a notebook. That habit is long gone, but I like going back to the quotes of something that I once read.

Today is Monday — start of the week for those who don’t consider the weeks to be starting on Sunday. I can add the first thing I read on a Monday here, and maybe in a year, it’d be interesting to go back and revisit what I was reading. It’s not a quote, as something that I found particularly interesting, or true, or could relate to. It is the first thing that I had in my reading day.

Last night, I started reading a new collection of stories by Haruki Murakami, titled “First Person Singular: Stories.” I read just one story before bed, and today, I started with the second story, “On A Stone Pillow.” Here’s the quote, beginning of the story.

I’d like to tell a story about a woman. The thing is, I know next to nothing about her. I can’t even remember her name, or her face. And I’m willing to bet she doesn’t remember me, either. When I met her, I was a sophomore in college, and I’m guessing she was in her mid-twenties. We both had part-time jobs at the same place, at the same time. It was totally unplanned, but we ended up spending a night together. And never saw each other again.

Haruki Murakami “On A Stone Pillow”

Tomorrow, Daniel Kahneman’s new book is released, “Noise. A Flaw in Human Judgement”, let’s see what I’m reading next Monday.

By the way, one story from Murakami reads like part of Salinger’s “Nine Stories,” juxtaposed over Japan a few decades later. It’s “With The Beatles.”